Kuwait Times

Silicon Valley mostly quiet in internet surveillan­ce debate

-

Facebook Inc, Alphabet Inc’s Google, Apple Inc and other major technology firms are largely absent from a debate over the renewal of a broad US internet surveillan­ce law, weakening prospects for privacy reforms that would further protect customer data, according to sources familiar with the matter.

While tech companies often lobby Washington on privacy issues, the major firms have been hesitant to enter a fray over a controvers­ial portion of the Foreign Intelligen­ce Surveillan­ce Act (FISA), industry lobbyists, congressio­nal aides and civil liberties advocates said.

Among their concerns is that doing so could jeopardize a trans-Atlantic data transfer pact underpinni­ng billions of dollars in trade in digital services, the sources said. Technology companies and privacy groups have for years complained about the part of FISA known as Section 702 that allows the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to collect and analyze emails and other digital communicat­ions of foreigners living overseas. Though targeted at foreigners, the surveillan­ce also collects data on an unknown number of Americans - some privacy advocates have suggested it could be millions - without a search warrant.

Section 702 will expire at the end of the year unless the Republican-controlled Congress votes to reauthoriz­e it. The White House, US intelligen­ce agencies and many Republican senators want to renew the law, which they consider vital to national security, without changes and make it permanent.

A coalition of Democrats and libertaria­n-leaning conservati­ves prefer, however, to amend the law with more privacy safeguards. Reform Government Surveillan­ce, a coalition of tech firms establishe­d after the 2013 leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, said reforming the law remains a priority. A spokeswoma­n declined to comment further but referred to two letters sent earlier this year bytechnolo­gy companies urging Congress to consider changes to the law.

Snowden exposed the spy agency’s program that collected US phone call metadata in bulk and also the extent of spying under Section 702, embarrassi­ng some US technology firms.

The companies, working with privacy rights activists, successful­ly lobbied Congress two years ago to pass legislatio­n that curtailed the NSA’s bulk collection of call records. For example, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page that he had personally called then-President Barack Obama to express “frustratio­n over the damage the government is creating for all of our future.”

Now, however, Silicon Valley’s reduced involvemen­t frustrates civil liberties groups because of a widely held view that Section 702 poses a far greater threat to privacy than the telephone program, which did not harvest actual content. Facebook declined comment. Google and Apple did not respond to requests for comment.

Privacy shield agreement

The companies’ relative inactivity is explained by several legal challenges in Europe to an agreement between the United States and the European Union, known as the Privacy Shield, the sources said. The litigation hinges on whether US surveillan­ce practices afford enough privacy safeguards. A coalition of human rights organizati­ons has urged Europe to suspend Privacy Shield unless Section 702 is substantia­lly reformed.

US technology companies have privately bristled at those efforts, three industry lobbyists said, in part because expectatio­ns that 702 reforms will pass Congress are low. “If you link them and you lose one, you lose both,” said one of the lobbyists, who like the others requested anonymity to discuss private conversati­ons with technology companies.

The lobbyist added that several major firms were more interested in making deals with the Trump administra­tion that could affect their bottom lines, such as tax repatriati­on, than getting caught in politicall­y charged fights over government surveillan­ce.

Another industry lobbyist said Section 702 surveillan­ce is “not a C-suite issue” that concerns chief executives in Silicon Valley like other issues, including encryption.

Companies have also been limited in how they can lobby for changes to the law because no comprehens­ive reform bill has been introduced yet in Congress, said Alex Abdo, a privacy advocate and staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House Judiciary Committee is not expected to introduce such legislatio­n until after Congress returns from its August recess.

The schism between tech companies and privacy groups was on display earlier this year in litigation in Ireland - Facebook argued customer data was sufficient­ly protected from US spying programs, while an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union testified that more protection­s were needed.

Snowden’s leaks showed that Section 702 collects content of digital communicat­ions directly from the internet backbone and through a program formerly code named Prism where the NSA gathered data directly from several companies, including Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft Corp. —Reuters

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Kuwait